368. To Thomas N. Longman
Transcript Coleridge family. Pub.E. L. G. i. 163.
Stamped: Keswick.
Monday Dec. 15 1800
Dear Sir
It gives me great pleasure that I am able to inform you, that the last sheet of the Lyrical Ballads is sent off 2 -- I have already commenced negotiations for securing them a fair & honest Review -- I should advise that 3 or 4 Copies should be sent to different people of eminence: one to Mrs Jordan 3 (who intended to sing stanzas of the Mad Mother in Pizarro if she acted Cora again --) one to Mrs Barbauld and one to Mr Wilberforce 4 -- if you agree with me Mr Wordsworth will write appropriate complimentary Letters with each / With neither of these has Mr W. any acquaintance. I propose it only as likely to push the sale -- of their ultimate & permanent success I have no doubt -- I am especially pleased that I have contributed nothing to the second volume, as I can now exert myself loudly and everywhere in their favor without suspicion of vanity or self-interest. I have written Letters to all my acquaintance whose voices I think likely to have any Influence. In all this I am guided, if I know my own heart, wholly & exclusively by my almost unbounded admiration of the poems -- The second volume is indeed greatly superior to the first. -- Now for myself. In Christmas week I shall be in London, & I will explain to you the delay in my manuscript / tho' indeed the explanation is short enough. After I had finished the work & written you, I was convinced by a friend that a long account which I had given of the Illuminati would raise a violent clamour against me & my publisher -- yet I have said nothing but what I am afraid was the truth / at the same time Mr Wordsworth who had been in a different part of Germany offered me the use of his Journal tho' not of his name -- I immediately resolved to throw my work into Chapters instead of Letters, & substitute my friend's account of Germany farther south than I
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1 John Woodvil, published 1802.
2 Actually, the last of the material for the Lyrical Ballads did not arrive in Bristol until 23 Dec.
3 Mrs. Dorothea Jordan ( 1762-1816), the actress.
4 William Wilberforce ( 1759-1833), the parliamentary leader of the abolitionists. For Wordsworth's letter to Wilberforce, which was composed by Coleridge, see Letter 375.
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had been instead of the obnoxious Letters. This however would have taken so little time that you would have had the copy, within a week or ten days at most later than the day appointed -but at that time a complaint seized my head & eyes, which made it impracticable for me even to read, and after a six weeks' continuance, during which time I had in vain used Leaches, Blisters, & God knows what, it was carried off by six large Boils which appeared behind my ear down to my shoulder & which are not yet quite healed -- I leave this place the day after Christmas Day, & you may depend on it that from the first of January to the printing of the last page your Printer shall not have to complain of an hour's delay. 1
Mrs Coleridge & my two children are well. You will present my best respects to Mrs Longman & believe me, dear Sir, with a great sense of your constant civility
Your obliged humble Servant,
S. T. Coleridge.